Next month, Susanna Mälkki and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra travel to North America for performances of renowned Finnish orchestral repertoire, with concerts scheduled for May 8 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, and May 9 at Carnegie Hall in New York. Known for premiering most of the great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s symphonies, the HPO will celebrate their homeland’s favorite composers with a program that includes Sibelius’ “Lemminkäinen’s Return” from Lemminkäinen Suite and Symphony No. 2, as well as Kaija Saariaho’s L’Aile du songe featuring soloist Claire Chase, a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient whose been praised by The New York Times as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe.
Photo: Marica Rosengard